> Ingrid Markhardt wrote:
<snip>>>
> >"undergoing" This is important both in terms of "creation"/affirmation,
> and in
> >terms of the "surface" which is to be allowed to veil the deeper depths. see
> >"Nietzsche Contra Wagner" at the end of _The Portable Nietzsche_ where he says
> >(this is from memory--I'm at work & away from my books)
> >
> >"Oh those Greeks! They had the courage to stop at the surface. . . adorers of
> >appearances,. . . tones!"
> >
> >Does this perhaps tuns the thread again slightly to a discussion of music,
> >tempo, rhythm...? a crucial element in _The Birth of Tragedy_, and the notion
> >of ER.
> >
>
> "Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to
> stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance,
> to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those
> Greeks were superficial--_out of profundity_." (Nietzsche Contra Wagner,
> "Epilogue," 2.)
>
> This, of course, leads rapidly off into "deep water," woman as truth, but
> relative to which depth is a fundamental illusion, etc....
>
> Part of the point of the "painting" quote, I think, is that the surface of
> the painting (a multiform of paintings) possesses its own autonomy that is
> not reflective of a deeper, but unseen, plan. Rather, the painting itself,
> as "appearance," is all. To be "Greek" here, in the sense intoned by
> Nietzsche above, would be to stop courageously at the surface of the
> painting, at the stroke of the brush, itself, its unfolding.
>
> Steve C.
>
The surface of the painting is not treated like a worldview here but
more touched upon as with strokes. In some way the moment fails to arrive
in its unity, as a "the", but is so involved in the becoming that the
surface of affects is all there is. Interestingly, a page later, in
Maxims #26, "From a thinker's innermost experience", the issue of
personalizing ideas emerges as does the illusory "ego" that spread itself
out over the world, that paints itself by and for itself. Something
incomplete can see itself "as" complete only as an image, as the
dabbings of another surface and another set of affects. One goes across
the surface in a diagonal or zigzag between thought and execution,
avoiding the trappings of the full stop or the deadend obligatory views
while following a muse that allows for free-spirited expressions or
wresting some of these powers from the muse and putting them on like
masks or adornments that recall other dancing women that led the Bachants
holding a giant phallus. What's behind all these tremendous spectacles, as
much as it's also behind Nietzsche's aphorisms, is a musical mood ( out
of the spirit of music ), a rhythm of conquest or glorious overthrow, a
selective tune that affirms and expresses, that's a rush of drunken
truth-telling that has been mingled with Apollonian control. This mood
music is at the heart of the tragic means of expression that tells one
instinctively how deep one has gone that has little to do with being a
mere spectator but everything to do with the accidental undergoing of
this tragic strain.
more music....
Leonardo Raggo///////\\\
ac857@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca
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